There is a system......

I live in a small country town, the nearest bigger town is more than 20 kilometres away, so when I am close to even bigger places I usually take advantage of the range of shops and purchase what I need. On Saturday when I was in Bendigo I went to Bunn***s and purchased a small hand trolley, the sort one uses to move fridges, washing machines or other large heavy objects – in my case more likely to garden related, or 30 kg bags of chicken food, and so save my back and other bits from my tendency to lift too much. It was made in China, did not cost a great deal, and came shrink wrapped in opaque plastic.

When I stripped off the plastic wrapping to assemble it yesterday, I found it only had one wheel. For a millisecond I wondered if this was some new invention, but then realised that was absurd. Yes, perhaps I should have checked it all more carefully, but could you imagine a trolley not having two wheels when the demo model was clearly displayed with a matching pair?

Anyway, I decided that today as I was going somewhere near another Bunn***s, I would exchange the faulty one for another that would actually work. I explained the situation to the Helpful Person at the customer service desk and she asked for my receipt – which of course I had lost along the way. Because they could not confirm my Bendigo purchase without it, I was instructed to go to the local Police Station and make a statutory declaration that said trolley had been purchased in another Bunn***s and only had one wheel, and then she would exchange it. So off I go to the Police station, get a stat dec signed and witnessed by rather bored but friendly female policeperson, and return to Bunn***s. Having checked my driving licence, the Helpful Person at complaints desk then gave me an exchange voucher so I could find another trolley and give the voucher to the check out person in payment. Everything going well, I thought………

However, there were no trolleys of this kind in stock at this particular Bunn***s, the next delivery was not due for another week, and the voucher was only valid for 24 hours. Back to the customer service desk.

The Helpful Person's solution was this – I would use the exchange voucher to purchase the trolley I had just returned and thus generate a receipt. I would then return the trolley for a second time as it only had one wheel, and she could give me a cash refund as I now had a receipt issued by that Bunn***s store.

This total procedure must have generated more than half a metre of printed paper from the cash register. In the end I got my money back, which I did not want – all I wanted was a little blue trolley with two wheels.